The security fence prevents anyone from getting any closer. No choice but continue to trudge up the muddy footpath.

Hence I miss the opportunity to get shots of the Andrewes/Alleyn and Cruden/Chaucer wards.

It's the Donne/Dickens ward which rises out of the undergrowth to greet me. This is one of two rather skinny wards, lacking the large day rooms of the others. (As the ward layout is somewhat symmetrical, Shaftesbury/Salter has a similar style on the other side of the hospital.)

2009: Female Ward D (and its counterpart on the male side of the hospital) had a particularly brutal design. Designed for acute and possibly violent patients, the day rooms were tiny and most of the wards comprised single rooms. The interiors felt claustrophobic and the impression was of an old fashioned gallery ward found in the older corridor-style asylums.

The interiors of these wards were rarely visited by explorers and photographs are rare. (It was top on my list to photograph when I visited the hospital in 2008). Marlon reported that the first and second floors were still locked until as late as 2006: when his group eventually found a sneaky way in, they found the wards pristine and totally unvandalised.